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CN Tower topped by Dubai but soars beyond in beauty

At some point during the next few weeks, the CN Tower will no longer be the tallest free-standing structure in the world.

It will be surpassed by the Burj Dubai, yet another nasty-looking petro-money monster in the United Arab Emirates. The question is: Does anybody care? Not likely.

It's amazing Toronto's 30-year-old tower has reigned as the world's tallest free-standing structure for as long as it has, but let's be honest, in the 21st century the fight for height has become degraded, ersatz and rather tasteless, even tacky.

To be blunt, the edifice complex is no longer a Western obsession; it has moved to arriviste nations recently grown wealthy by plundering their own natural resources, and, in China's case, its population.

You want proof? Just ask yourself: Until the Burj Dubai (due to top off 165 storeys of offices and apartments a year from now) began to claim both records, what was the tallest building in the world?

The answer, lest you've forgotten, is Taipei 101, a 2004 architectural grotesque that stands just over half a kilometre tall.

Before that, it was the Petronas Towers (1998) in Kuala Lumpur. Few outside Malaysia have ever heard of the building, unremarkable but for its height.

The need to be the biggest, highest, shiniest – whatever – is something cities go through in their civic adolescence, so to speak. Paris built the Eiffel Tower for the Universal Exposition of 1889.

In New York, the race to the clouds was played out in the 1920s and '30s, the great age of skyscrapers. Think of the competition between William Van Alen and his Chrysler Tower (1930) and William Lamb and the Empire State Building (1931).

All three are as famous now as ever. All are also magnificent structures. That's the critical factor. None of the early giants has held a height record for decades, but as icons they loom as large as ever.

Their places in the collective imagination will never be matched by Taipei, Petronas or Burj. Not only is there less interest in height records, the architecture of these three ugly sisters lacks the poetry of their antecedents.

The CN Tower, while technically not a skyscraper – a needle housing communications cables is not the same as a building – also has its place in contemporary culture. Sure it was tallest, but its design said something more; it speaks of the modern age and man's eternal desire to reach ever higher. More to the point, it soars. It is a spire, tall, thin and, yes, beautiful.

Of course, it also says much about Toronto's wanna-be psychology, but the important thing is that the CN Tower transcends the banality of its makers' intentions. The designer, Australian-born architect John Andrews, came up with a masterpiece, a structure that is somehow quintessential, not compromised by design trends or architectural fashion. It is elemental; this, we feel, is what a tower should look like.

Even the accomplished Santiago Calatrava, creator of the Montjuic Telecommunications Tower in Barcelona, didn't come close to the CN Tower.

By contrast, the Dubai building is all about height for height's sake. Its ambition can be read in every detail. It is what it is, nothing more. It goes no further than its creator's desires.

This is why the CN Tower's reign as one of the world's most recognizable and admired towers isn't threatened. It possesses qualities more important than mere height; it has a kind of perfection that makes it indispensable, irreducible and incomparable. It rises above time and place and the conditions of its own creation. It simply is, much in the manner of the pyramids, not exquisite like the Parthenon, it's true, but equally essential.

Spires elsewhere may out-climb the CN Tower, but Toronto need not concern itself. Outside their host cities, few will care.

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